


after the foxes have known our taste

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Chocolate Box 2015, Gen, Post-Canon, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 02:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5894188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby is the little boy who could have been King. Sarah needs to save him from himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	after the foxes have known our taste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shewhoguards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/gifts).



> Title from "In a Week" by Hozier featuring Karen Cowley. Many thanks to my mystery beta reader.

The seventh time it happens, he breaks his left leg. 

Sarah finds him in a heap by the western-most wall, bleeding and in pain, his eyes rolling back in his head. She heaves him to his feet and half-carries him back to the house. It's the third one in as many years, and she dreads having to relocate yet again, but she simply can't allow this to continue. 

The doctor is a tall woman with a kind face and an efficient manner, her telephone number on Sarah's speed-dial. She doesn't ask questions and she has yet to call the police. That, Sarah privately thinks, makes her very stupid indeed, but no one can protect her brother, not even the police if they were to be informed. A shabbily-dressed social worker would undoubtedly show up on their doorstep to take Toby away and it wouldn't matter. 

Yes, no one can protect her brother, not from himself. 

*

It started on a Wednesday, that much Sarah recalls. 

It was a dreary Wednesday in May, three homes ago, when the owls started appearing. Swift as arrows, they landed gracefully on telephone posts and recently-flowering trees. Sarah watched them suspiciously, for owls always had to be watched, just in case, especially when they came during daylight hours. 

A week to the day later, Toby asked his question, in a quiet, angry voice. They were in their cozy living room, the curtains drawn, preparing to watch something light on the television before bed. They no longer had parents of their own, but Toby was seven and Sarah was the only parent he would ever need now. He had meant everything to her since she'd been fifteen. She used to think it would always be enough. She quickly found out it wasn't, not anymore. 

He was carrying a large bowl heaped with buttery popcorn from the kitchen, which he first placed in front of Sarah without a word. Then he said, "Why did you take my future away from me?" and Sarah sat frozen as he proceeded to stomp and yell and whisper and plead, their pleasant evening all but forgotten. 

*

Owls speak to him. Sarah has a shotgun now and tries to blast them away. She felt guilty for a week after buying it; these days, she merely curses her bad aim and the owls' magical ability to dodge shots. 

She's ashamed how long it took her to realise what was going on: Toby believes she's taken some mythical future as the heir apparent to the Goblin King away from him. Some days, she wants to bang her head against a wall with how ridiculous that idea is, but that wouldn't help. To be perfectly honest, nothing seems to help. 

Reasoning with him certainly hasn't. She hasn't been able to yell at him since she was fifteen. If she could, she'd yell with all the force her lungs have, _He would have turned you into a hideous goblin, and who knows what else!_ She's turned him into a prisoner in his own house, and perhaps that means someone in authority will come for him after all, but that seems far off into the future. 

*

His left leg heals slowly. He's quiet and moody, refuses her help at every turn, sulks and glares, but Sarah watches him like a hawk. The owls can't enter the house, so perhaps he's better off with a broken leg for the time being. 

The next day, she finds him at dawn crumpled on the bathroom floor, his cheeks bearing dried tear tracks. He refuses to talk to her for the rest of the day. When he starts talking to her again, he's monosyllabic and casually mean. He's never been outright mean before, but all Sarah feels is surprise it took him so long to get there. 

So she tends to him, and wordlessly leaves him meals, and patiently helps him around the house. 

And at night, as she watches over his fitful sleep, she hears him wistfully mutter, "I shall be king," and she knows it will never, ever stop.


End file.
